A Song in Exile: How a Shabbat Melody Gave Strength to a Future Torah Giant

Fleeing Brisk, Facing Loneliness

As a young man, Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman left his family home in Brisk and fled to Switzerland to escape conscription into the Polish army. It was a wrenching decision. For the first six months, he lived entirely alone, without friends or familiar faces. Only later did his close friend, Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, join him.

Rabbi Shteinman would later recount those early days in Switzerland with tears in his eyes. The loneliness, the absence of community, and the ache for his parents and friends back in Brisk were unbearable. “There were moments,” he once admitted with rare emotional openness, “when I felt I could no longer bear the longing. I wanted to return. But I couldn’t. Leaving Poland had cost me my citizenship. It was considered an act of betrayal.”

A Shabbat Melody that Brought Peace

This painful exile dragged on. But one Friday night, something changed. After the prayers, when the congregation sang “Yigdal,” Rabbi Shteinman experienced a profound sense of calm. “Suddenly I felt an extraordinary peace,” he recalled. “I felt that God was directing my steps from above. He placed me here in distant, unfamiliar Switzerland, far from my birthplace in Brisk. If He did this, it must be for the good.”

History would later prove that this seemingly random exile was nothing less than a miracle of survival. Switzerland became his place of refuge, sparing him from the horrors of the Nazi inferno that would soon engulf Europe.

The Power of “Yigdal” and the Thirteen Principles of Faith

The liturgical poem “Yigdal Elokim Chai” (“Exalted be the living God”) is rooted in the thirteen principles of faith formulated by the Rambam (Maimonides). The piyut (liturgical poem) contains thirteen lines, each corresponding to one of the principles. In Sephardic communities, two additional rhyming lines are added at the end.

“Yigdal” is traditionally recited before the morning Shacharit prayer, and in some communities, it is sung at the end of the service. Sephardic communities conclude the evening service on Shabbat and holidays with it as well.